


The Roche Limit

by sarahxxxlovey



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, College, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Feelings, Feels, Fluff, I Love You, Jealousy, Long-Distance Relationship, Long-Term Relationship(s), Lydia Martin Loves Stiles Stilinski, One Shot, Post-Canon, Post-High School, Stiles Stilinski Loves Lydia Martin, Stydia, Trash for Stydia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-19
Updated: 2018-04-19
Packaged: 2019-04-25 03:25:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14369865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarahxxxlovey/pseuds/sarahxxxlovey
Summary: "'I mean jeez, Stiles,” she sighs, “you’ve been in love with me since we were eight. Do you know how intimidating that is?''Do you know how intimidating you are?' He says incredulously, pulling his chair up to sit at the end of the bed in front of her. 'My girlfriend is studying applied mathematics at MIT, has a beyond genius IQ, and brings up some obscure astronomical term while she’s breaking up with me.'A small smile creeps over her face despite her attempts to hide it.'I’m not breaking up with you,' she says softly."





	The Roche Limit

She’s sitting on his bed, wearing his sweatshirt and tapping away at the keys of her computer as they register for their second-semester classes. He’s sitting at his desk and turning in his chair to ask her opinion on whether Introduction to Crime Scene Investigation or Leadership in Law Enforcement but at that exact moment she’s biting her lip and twirling a curl around her finger and she’s lying in his bed on her stomach and it takes his breath away.

He wonders how he’ll ever have stronger feelings for her than he does in that moment, these soft and quiet moments that seem so mundane, but he knows that he will. That gut-punch of a feeling that he had when they were younger — when she walked by and he got a whiff of her perfume — that feeling hasn’t gone away; it’s just that the smell of her perfume lingers on his sheets and clothes long after she’s gone now. Instead of seeing her hair whip in the wind as she walks away form him he knows what it’s like to bury his fingers in her hair as he kisses her.

She’s pretty incredible. 

She’s kicking ass at MIT, of course. He’s loving the FBI training and this weekend is one of the rare weekends they have together and it feels like heaven wrapped up into seventy-two hours of bliss. She had a long weekend when her classes got cancelled and he skipped his Friday activities to come back to Beacon Hills. Seeing their parents and having lazy make-out sessions in his room and going to their favorite places and just being together without miles and miles between them. 

It’s crazy that something this simple is so cherished now, but that’s the kind of thing that being apart for months on end will do for you.

It reminds him of all the times over the years when they sat in this room and tried to solve a puzzle. Pouring over red string and classical Latin, theorizing about hunters and werewolves. There were remnants of it all over his room. Leftover pieces of old murder boards and pictures and newspaper clippings, thumbtacks across every surface and hundreds of holes left in his walls. 

His dad had told him that Lydia had come to the house while Stiles was… gone. That she’d been convinced that he was real, that she wouldn’t let anyone forget him. She’d pulled out his lacrosse jersey and his clothes and described his room like how it was supposed to be, not how it was. She’d figured it out.

They had solved a lot of mysteries over the years. 

Now the mystery was somehow more intimidating and infinitely more normal in the most comforting way: how on earth were they supposed to navigate their schools’ website while also creating a schedule that didn’t give them 8 am’s.

He’s been watching her forever but more specifically he’s been watching her for the last half-hour, wrapping and unwrapping a random thread from his bedsheets around her finger. It’s driving him crazy, the movement back and forth, combined with the biting of her lip and she doesn’t know whether it’s turning him on or annoying him.

He finally realizes this is what it must be like to be around his constantly tapping fingers and feet. 

“Lyds, you’re killing me here,” he says exasperatedly, snatching the string out of her hands. “Stop it.” 

She sighs a deep sigh, closing her laptop and turning onto her back on his bed to stare at his ceiling.

“What if we have a Roche limit?” she says. 

He looks at her confusedly. 

She narrows her eyes at him. 

“What?” He says, his brows furrowed. 

“A Roche limit,” she repeats.

He stares at her blankly. 

She rolls her eyes and launches into an explanation. “When a moon orbits a planet, it gets closer and closer. The gravity of the planet pulls the moon in.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard of gravity.”

“The moon gets closer and closer to the planet, but there’s a limit. The Roche limit. The distance at which the moon breaks to pieces under gravitational stress.”

He tries to figure out what she was saying, but comes up empty.“Your point being?” 

“Triton! Triton is going to come apart into little pieces up someday.” She says, like this will obviously be the explanation for his question. “And not even that — it’ll also break into little pieces if it goes too far away!”

“Lydia…”

“What if we have a Roche limit?” 

Still nothing. “Lyds…”

“What if all the stress is going to break us up?”

“Is _that_ what you’re saying? Why didn’t you just say that instead of saying some thing about Triton and whatever planet it orbits-”

“Neptune. It orbits Neptune.”

“Okay,” he looks at her sharply as he blinks rapidly, “a _little_ bit off topic.” 

“It’s not off topic. We’re talking about the Roche limit.”

“Which is off topic itself… are you scared we’re going to break up?”

“Well, everything is going to at some point. Someday everything will.”

“Triton will?”

“Yes,” she says with a small voice and big sad eyes.

“Someday being…?”

“3.6 billion years from now…” 

“You’re comparing us to something that’s going to break up in 3.6 million years?”

“And - _and_ Titon goes the wrong way round! _And_ it’s doomed!”

He can’t help but laugh at how adorable and clueless and weird she is. 

“Are you… are you breaking up with me?” He says, squinting his eyes and tilting his head, his expression thinly masking laughter.

She glares at him. “You know I’m not.”

“Well it kind of sounds like you are.”

“That’s _not_ what I’m saying.” 

“Well what _are_ you saying?”

“I just… what if this isn’t everything you’ve dreamed of?” She says, her voice small. 

He laughs. 

“I’m serious!” She says indignantly, turning over onto her stomach to get an upright look at him. “You look at me like I hung the stars or something. It’s like I can do no wrong-”

“I know you can do wrong,” he laughs.

Her eyes snap up to his and she glares at him.

“Okay, okay,” he says, putting his hands up in mock surrender. “I’ll let you keep talking.”

“I mean jeez, Stiles,” she sighs, “you’ve been in love with me since we were eight. Do you know how intimidating that is?”

“Do you know how intimidating _you_ are?” He says incredulously, pulling his chair up to sit at the end of the bed in front of her. “My girlfriend is studying applied mathematics at MIT, has a beyond genius IQ, and brings up some obscure astronomical term while she’s breaking up with me.” 

A small smile creeps over her face despite her attempts to hide it.

“I’m not breaking up with you,” she says softly.

“Plus she’s smokin’ hot and loves me a lot.”

“Stiles,” she sighs with a shaky laugh, her insecurities melting with the look in his eyes. “What if you meet someone else? What if distance makes you fall out of love with me?” 

“You know I’ll never get over you,” he says with an eye roll.

“But what if you do?” She says, her voice small and nervous, “What if you fall in love and find your soul mate and forget all about me?” 

“You ripped open a hole in time and space to get me back,” he replies, his voice uncharacteristically serious. “Those are big shoes to fill.”

“What if—?”

“Impossibly big shoes to fill,” he says certainly.

“What if this girl has _really_ big feet?” She says, her voice breaking. 

“Hey,” he says, sitting next to her and wrapping his arms around her waist as she sits up and leans against him. He pushes the hair away from her face. “We’ll get through this. It won’t be easy but we’ll get through it.” 

“How do you know?” She says, her eyes full of tears. 

He looks at her, his eyes scanning her face, her cute button nose and the light freckles dusting the tops of her cheeks and the strawberry blonde baby hairs around her forehead and her thick eyelashes. He runs his finger along her cheek. 

(She secret hopes he doesn’t mess up her contour.)

“You and I… we’re…,” he tries to start but all the words coming to his head don’t accurately describe what he’s feeling. 

How is he supposed to put ten years of memories and feelings and experiences into words? The way that his heart speeds up when he sees her. How she was the first girl that he liked, the one that he thought about whenever his dad would ask about every high school dance. The tears they shared in the front seat of his car, when he told her after all those years that he loved her. How she held him under and pulled him back. How it felt she he knew that she felt it back, that she hadn’t said it but that he knew in his heart it was true. 

How his heart aches when she’s gone, how he’ll roll around in his bed for hours, unable to get her off his mind, holding his pillow as he cries himself to sleep because all he wants is her to be there next to him. How his heart breaks into a million little pieces when she texts him saying that she can’t sleep either because she misses him so much. The feeling of her lips pressed against his and the feeling of her in his arms, finally, finally, _finally_ in his arms. The way that everything is fine again when she gets to fly down for the weekend or he flies up. 

“In the end,” he decides on, “of course it’s you. Of _course_ it’s you.”

“Stiles,” she says softly for the millionth time, her eyes glistening. 

“I don’t think we’re like a moon at all,” he says, laughter in his eyes again.

“What are we like then?” She whispers, looking up at him with all the love that he’d ever hoped for.

“Maybe we’re the sun. Maybe the stress brought us together.”

“That’s now how—” she laughs.

“Who cares? For real, what’s going to break us up?” He says, his talking getting faster and more passionate. “We’ve been through like… _so_ much shit together, Lydia. Hate to bring it up again but time and space didn’t keep us apart the first time and… and it’s not going to keep us apart this time either.”

Her bottom lip puckers into the cutest crying face he’s ever seen and he kisses her quickly, wrapping her into the biggest hug he can manage. 

“How are you so good at this?” She laughs, wiping under her eyes quickly.

“I don’t know,” he says honestly with a chuckle. 

“I love you, Stiles,” she says and his heart skips a thousand beats.

“I love you, too,” he says. “Like a lot. And that’s not going to stop.”

She nods and presses her lips against his and it hits him again that she's sitting in his bed, wearing his sweatshirt, loving him. 

**Author's Note:**

> I’m such trash for Stydia. SUCH trash. 
> 
> I was in a long distance relationship with a boyfriend - 3 years of 2000 miles and 1 year of 200+ miles. It’s the worst ever. This is a conversation we had about a million times - “what if you fall in love with someone else?” I love the idea of them growing a lot through distance and working on problems and smitten Stiles is my favorite Stiles. 
> 
> BTW - that boyfriend and I are engaged now, so it all worked out in the end. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed it! Leave a comment should you feel like you have something lovely to say.


End file.
